Data protection is an important part of managing most any computer system. Commerce, safety, and entertainment all depend on the availability of data residing on various computers around the world. While computers and storage hardware have become more reliable over time, there still exists a possibility for data loss due to equipment failure, human error, human malice, or other circumstance.
Networked data protection is a strategy for backing up data that involves sending a copy of the data over a proprietary or public network to an off-site server. The server could be hosted by a third-party service provider, who charges the backup customer a fee based on capacity, bandwidth, number of users, or other criteria. In addition to backup, recovery is also a concern to most businesses and government entities. In a critical operation, it can be important to restore data as quickly as possible. Data protection and recovery are part of risk mitigation for most any business or institution. It is therefore desirable to have improvements in data protection.